So You Want to Build a School Library? Part III

Welcome to So You Want to Build a School Library? Part III! This is part three of four, so we're nearly there. I've discussed where the idea came from, and some of the factors motivating me to really dig in an focus on the library this year. Now we come at last to the actual implementation of this school library. Time to (quite literally) get our hands dirty!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Step 2: Method to the Madness, or, pulling this library together

One problem I’m trying to address with this library project is the lack of access to books that so many Cameroonians face. At my school, these problems begin with a literal lack of access to the library. That is to say, the door handle is missing. Not broken; not stuck; literally, missing. There is none. Il n’y a pas. Handle wala. 

At this point, I am one of three people with a key to the library. Despite the lack of handle, we have a big padlock latching the doors shut which, I have discovered through much trial and error, can be used in combination with sheer brute force to pry the doors open. Problem solving, Peace Corps style. 

We’ve now managed to get into the library. Welcome — please disregard the bats in the ceiling. If you’d been here a month ago, you’d have found the floor coated with dust and bat poop an inch and a half thick, the desks in disarray, and the shelves empty, the books we did have shoved into boxes and scattered around the room. Just how that came to be, I’m not sure, but I returned after a long summer to find that some of the boxes had been placed in the centre of the room directly under a leak in the roof, rendering many of the books unreadable. Others were mouldy and damp, the pages stained and stuck together. Still more books had been infested with termites, and I picked them up only to have them fall apart in my hands. 

The weeks after my return to school were spent mostly in that dusty, mouldy room, trying to clean and sort books into piles of completely destroyed, mostly destroyed, and mostly ok. From there, I began to register the remaining books. Each book was given an individual code consisting of a letter (or letters) and four numbers, a system that I shamelessly borrowed from a brilliant volunteer in my staige. The letters corresponded to the ‘category’ of the book — M for mathematiques, HG for histoire/geographie, R for Roman, ANG for Anglais, and so on. I began numbering at 0001, and went up from there. So Biologie 5e might be labelled as SCI0025, and Germinale might be R0046. The system is simple, low-tech, and easy to replicate — all of the ingredients for a (hopefully) sustainable system of organisation. 

In addition to registering books, the other librarian and I agreed that we would start a student registry, to keep track of the students who are checking books out and have on record a means of tracking them down in the event that a book goes missing. It takes a little time, and the students are often confused when I ask if they’ve registered yet. Sometimes a student will look over his or her friends’ shoulder and translate the questions into patois, which makes me wonder how many of them can’t actually read the column titles that explain the requested information. 

A community member, a doctor at the village health centre, stops by every now and again. He likes to read, he told me, and was excited to see that the library was open. The third time he came by, he asked if he could ask the Principal for permission to donate two shelves, a table, and a chair to the library. They were not being used at the health centre and he thought they could be put to better use here, he explained as he looked at the students crammed four to a desk pouring over an informatique textbook, students sitting on the floor to flip through a GEO magazine, students pushing each other for space to examine their options on our single shelf of French fiction books. 

Beginning in September and running through the first week of October, I ran a very successful fundraising campaign to raise money to purchase books for the library. Shout out to everyone who donated -- thank you, thank you so much for your contributions! I've already begun purchasing books here in Cameroon, and we have a large shipment of books coming in any day now. 

Since mid-September, I have registered nearly 600 books. We’ve rearranged desks and shelves to fit more students into the library, and the floors are now regularly cleaned rather than habitually ignored. The shelves are organised by subject, and are generally neat (or as neat as they can be). There is a tin where students and teachers can submit requests for new acquisitions, and the chalkboard is decorated with quotes about the importance of reading and education. But most importantly, more importantly than any physical object in the room, for the first time in a long time, the library is filled with students. 

So You Want to Build a School Library? Part II

In case you missed last weeks' post, I'm working on a series of posts entitled So You Want to Build a School Library? wherein I give a behind-the-scenes glimpse of my work at the Lycee de Dibi library. Last week, I discussed the "origin story" of the library project. This week, we'll be going through the "motivation" phase -- in this case, two literacy conferences I attended in August and September. The first was a part of our larger MST conference here in Cameroon from August 22-24. The second was a two week long literacy conference in Uganda that included attendees from 11 different Peace Corps countries, and took place from August 29-September 9. Both meant to highlight the importance of literacy, and how to encourage literacy and reading culture in our countries and at our posts. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Step 2: Motivation. or, the months of August and September

Monday, 22 August 2016

The room is silent. Everyone’s eyes are closed as I read a description of a house from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The kind of house you never seem to come to the end of; a room with only a wardrobe and a dead bluebottle on the windowsill; rooms filled with books, stairs that lead up and down, a room with a suit of armour, walls lined with pictures. I finish, and have them open their eyes. “What sort of person do you think this house belongs to?” I ask. A counterpart raises his hand. “It belongs to an alcoholic!” he declares confidently. The room bursts into laughter. I was prepared for a lot of responses, but I admit this wasn’t one of them. “What makes you think that?” I prompt. “Because there was a blue bottle in the windowsill,” he explains. 

I ask them to draw something that they had visualised as I was reading. The room is surprisingly quiet, though the quiet is occasionally punctured with quiet bouts of chatter, hushed laughs and shaking heads as they quietly bemoan their artistic abilities. Two people share drawings based on the line about it being a house that one never seems to come to the end of — one draws a maze, and the other draws a long, never-ending hallway. “Now, we all listened to the same passage,” I say. “But we have here two drawings, based on the same passage, the same line, even — and they look completely different. Interesting, isn’t it?” 

Saturday, 27 August

It’s 7:00 in the morning, and our car leaves at 8:00. 

“Hey, Tressa,” I say. “Did you ever get your passport from Sally?” 

“No,” she says. “I had mine already from when I visited my sisters in London.” 

“Shit,” I say. 

Saturday, 27 August

“Hello, this is the captain speaking again. Our landing will be delayed due to presidential activity. …also, the radar in Nairobi has stopped working.”

Saturday, 4 September

I’m sitting in a Ugandan classroom. The room is filled to bursting — PCVs and Peace Corps staff take up about 15 desks, and around 75 Ugandan students fill the remaining 10 at the back of the room. It’s windy, and the wind whips through windows whose panes have long since shattered, if they ever had panes at all. The walls are dusty, smudged with dirt and chalk markings, the remnants of a phonics lesson from who knows when. 

A row of timid-looking primary schoolers line the front of the classroom. They stare straight ahead, or else look at their feet. Many of them are swamped in their uniforms — their little arms are swallowed in short sleeves that stop at the elbow, skirts rolled up to keep their hems at the appropriate length. Some of them stand with their chests stuck out, looking out the window as if they don’t care. But they do care — they so badly want to win. 

A man calls out: “Number 2! Your word is: accountable.” 

The students in the back collectively gasp. This one is a tough one. Number two swallows. 

“Accountable. A-C-C-O-U-N-T-A-B-L-E.” 

She takes a step back into line. 

“Attitude.” “Adorable.” The back of the class whispers, “Attitude! Attitude.” Each word is followed by a whispered chorus from the back three rows. Some trying it out themselves, translating it into patois, or guessing at definitions. Spellers can tell if they spelled the word correctly or not based on how loud the clapping is. Cheers mean it’s right; polite clapping means it’s wrong.

I watch a tiny P4 named Jaqueline spell out “affectionate” and “commendable”. She stands at maybe 4 feet tall. She’s very popular — everyone loves an underdog, and she’s beat out students 3 levels above her. It comes down to a draw between her and another student. She takes “access,” and the other takes “agility”.  They are both tripped up by “government”. It’s a close race, but tiny Jacqueline wins on “captivate” when her competitor misses “cautious”. The applause is deafening. 

Monday, September 5

Over 100 people from 11 different countries stand in a circle at a Primary Teachers Training College (PTC) in Uganda. Together, they sing a song in 4-part harmony: We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. 

Tuesday, September 6

We are visited by Ugandan author Asiimwe Deborah Kawe. She is a beautiful speaker, and I'm sure she is an equally beautiful writer. She speaks about many things, in particular the importance of telling your own story. And in telling us this, she told us one of her own childhood stories. A story about performing the ekyevugo, a traditional Western Ugandan call-and-response poem. A call-and-response poem performed exclusively by men. A poem many men fear to perform, such is its complexity, its significance -- weddings could be postponed for a poor performance. 

And she was in seventh grade. 

She is in seventh grade, and she asks her teacher to allow her to perform this poem. No, he tells her. Ask your brother to perform it. I will not teach it to you. But she persists. She refuses to accept refusal. And he relents. If you get permission from your parents, he says. If you get their permission, I will teach it to you. 

And of course, she doesn't. She smiles as she lets us in on that secret -- I knew my mother would say no, and so I didn't ask. I returned the next day, and my teacher asked me, did you get permission from your mother? And I told him, yes. Not, she adds hastily, that I am encouraging you to lie to your parents. But that is what I did. 

And so the day of the performance comes. This tenacious Ugandan girl walks on stage in traditional dress -- the crowd is silent, at first. They stare. And they wait. And they wait. And they wait. 

Her throat goes dry. All of her practice, all of her work, all of her temerity and bravery -- it is swallowed in this silence. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. The words have flown away. 

This silence, this horrible lack of sound, is punctured by the only thing worse than the quiet -- laughter. Her cheeks burn as the laughter swells around her. Desperately, she seeks her parents out in the crowd. Her mother is covering her face in shame, but her father meets her gaze. Her father meets her gaze, and slowly raises a hand. He beckons to her -- come on, now. 

This motion pulls the words from her lips. The words ring out in the hall -- and the words are met with silence. A call and response with no response. She swallows, and repeats the line. Silence. 

And then a voice. A response. Her father, again, throwing her a lifeline. She moves on to the next line, and he continues with her. Her voice grows stronger, her back straightens, her words fill the room, demanding that the audience respond, demanding the respect due to her. And in the middle of an ocean of words, a sea of sound, her father is an anchor. She is a pioneer, sailing the seas of "why not?" Why not allow girls to perform the ekyevugo? Why not allow girls, like boys, to sign up to perform without requiring their parents' permission? Why not? 

From that day on, she tells us, her words commanding the room just as they had when she was a girl, nobody at that school dared to tell another girl what she could or could not do. 

Wednesday, September 7

We sit with 5 PTC student-teachers in a circle under a mango tree. It’s hot oustide, but the tree is shady and there’s a breeze, so it’s not so bad. I have a full mug of tea — spiced, with milk — but before I can take my second sip, the wind drops a clump of pollen flowers into it. Aww, tea. 

I read The Lorax to my students — my students, who next year will have students of their own. My students, who hold the fate of tomorrow's students in their hands. Today’s lesson is on analysis, and how to teach students to apply the texts they read to the outside world. I came prepared with discussion questions, terrified as all teachers are of dead silence, but with the first question — what did you think of the Lorax? — they were off, discussing environmental degradation, making comparisons between Uganda and the world of the Once-ler, discussing the dangers of pollution and climate change. My examples, discussion questions, the article I so carefully copied out onto poster paper, the materials that I spent hours preparing are all rendered completely unnecessary, and it is wonderful. 

Thursday, 8 September

It’s raining, so we’ve been forced inside. We huddle on couches, arms tucked in against the chill. The rain drips outside and thunder grumbles in the distance as Sarah tells us, “Education is not the filling of a jar, but the handling of a fire.”

So You Want to Build a School Library? Part I

These next few posts will all be a part of a series entitled So You Want to Build a School Library? which will lead you through how and why I decided to make my school library my main focus (outside of my actual classes). Today's post will focus on the why -- the origin story of this project, if you will. Enjoy! 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Step 1: Is this Necessary? or, the Reawakening of my Inner Die-Hard Nerd

My first week in Dibi, I visited the Proviseur’s office, to discuss the usual — who I am, where I’m from, what I’m doing here in Cameroon, etc., etc. At the end of our brief chit chat, I asked him if there was anything he would like me to focus on in Dibi, and he said the library. That was it — the library. 

This was a very broad topic. 

When I arrived in Dibi, the library was underused, understocked, and under-cleaned (which I realise isn’t a word, but I was on a roll with the under- words). The ceiling was infested with bats and wasps, there were spiderwebs everywhere, and the floor was coated with dust and bat poop at least an inch thick. It clearly didn’t get a lot of use. There was one librarian, Madame Pelnda, but her schedule was so full with her regular classes that she just didn’t have much time to work in the library. She had a list of all of the books that were theoretically in the library, and she was in the process of marking off which ones were there and which were missing. She said that once the current books were all accounted for, she would like to go about getting more books. 

Well, ok. I started spending time in the library checking off books, but to be honest, the process was tedious and time-consuming, and I couldn’t help but think there had to be a better way of accounting for the books rather than picking up a book and spending 1-5 minutes flipping through pages, trying to find a corresponding title to mark off. I spent some time organising the library as best I could, but then, I’m ashamed to admit, I got caught up with classes and other things, and I didn’t spend much time with the books. 

Then DEAR Day came around, which I’ve already posted about; and then book reports. This was the turning point, for me. 

Not even the book reports themselves, actually, although they helped. Seeing these kids get really invested in their reports — maybe it was because they wanted to get a good grade. Always possible. But I had students working with me after class, showing up at my house for extra help — this was something more than I had seen for any other projects. Most of them chose picture books or comic books— Ms. Marvel was HUGELY popular, and there were a few classics like The Berenstain Bears and Animorphs. I had them write their opinions of the book in the last paragraph, which yielded a wide range of results, from the insightful to the hilarious (from “I really liked Ms. Marvel because the main character was a girl who is Muslim”, “This book is interesting. She is intelligent and strong” and “I liked it because Ms. Marvel helped her friend Wolverine” to “I did not like this book because it is fiction, and I only like books which are about true things” and “I did not like this book because the elephant ruined the classroom, and now the students cannot go to school”). While they wrote their own book reports, I wrote my own on poster paper to give them an example of what I was looking for. At the very end, as a reward for all of their hard work, I cooked up some popcorn and I screened the movie version of my book report book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. 

Now, for those of you who maybe don’t know me well, or didn’t know me in elementary and middle school, let me give you a bit of background of my history with Harry Potter. 

I have read the Harry Potter books probably over 50 times each. I know my Hogwarts house (Hufflepuff), I’ve made potions on Pottermore, I’ve aced every online Harry Potter quiz I can find. I’ve been to Harry Potter world and I own a Hufflepuff sweater. I even have a Harry Potter tattoo. Suffice to say, I’m pretty “into” Harry Potter. 

But, as with many fans, while we will always love Harry Potter and Star Wars and Star Trek and Lord of the Rings, we only ever get one chance to read or watch the series we love for the first time. And we only once read them for a second time. A third time, A tenth time. By the twentieth time you see a movie or read a book, the way you take it in has changed. There’s a settled, comfortable feeling to it. You can quote all of the lines, you’ve spotted all of the errors — maybe you put it on as background noise while you’re grading papers (or writing them), or you marathon it over the summer when you’re feeling nostalgic and have nothing else to do. It will always be special, of course — aren’t worn books always the best kind? — but it loses some of its sparkle. It’s not shiny and new and exciting anymore. 

So how do you bring something back? How do you make it new when it’s been old for years? As some of you with children may already know, it’s simple — you share it with someone who has never seen it before. 

Getting back to the movie, then. Before beginning the movie, we had a brief review of fiction vs. non-fiction. There is a widespread belief in magic and sorcellerie here, and I didn’t want to be kicked out of the community for encouraging sorcellerie. We established that the movie is very much fiction, and then the real magic began (I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t help it). 

My students were hooked from the very start. On a normal day, it is practically impossible to get them to stay completely quiet and focused for even two minutes — but on that day, students who are usually chatty and disruptive flapped their hands and hissed at anyone who dared to interrupt the movie. Some of my more ambitious students asked for clarification of vocabulary. Some questions (“Madame, what is ‘thanks’?” “It means ‘thank you,’ it’s just shorter.”) were easier than others (“Madame, what does ‘bloody’ mean?” “Uh…it’s like ‘very’. ‘Very brilliant.’”) They didn’t always take my word for things (“Madame, what are those?” “They’re called goblins. They work at the bank.” “But they’re not real?” “Well, goblins aren’t, but they are played by real people.” “Madame, no they aren’t.” “Yes, they are! Real people wearing makeup.” “But madame, they are so small! Madame, you are sure those are real people? No, madame. They must be children.” “I am really very sure they are fully-grown adult people.”)

But the best part was watching their reactions. One girl cried out (walaay!) when the snake escaped its cage. They pointed and whispered at the owls flittering around Number 4, and Dudley’s tail was as hilarious to them as it was horrifying. The two girls in the front row clutched each others’ arms as Harry, Ron and Hermione fought the mountain troll, just as I remember clutching onto my mother during the same scene when I was younger. They whispered about the patourou professor (patourou meaning cat in Fulfulde), and held their breath during the Quidditch match, gasping out loud when Harry nearly falls off of his bucking broomstick. There were cries of shock when Quirrell revealed Voldemort on the back of his head, and laughs of triumph when Gryffindor won the House Cup. 

I realise this is starting to feel very long and tangential, so I’ll try to wrap it up. In showing this movie I was able, through my students, to see Harry Potter through a fresh pair of eyes. No longer was it just another movie I’ve seen dozens of times, a story I could tell in my sleep. Watching my students watch Harry Potter reminded me of why I have three stars tattooed on my wrist, why I still turn to this familiar favourite when I’ve had a really bad week. why I fell in love with a series about a bespectacled young wizard all those years ago. It reminded me how books can capture your imagination, can inspire and encourage passion and kindness and tolerance. And these are things that I believe everyone has a right to, and everyone should have access to. Books change lives. Words can change the world. The world is set out before these students to light aflame — books are the spark that lights the fire.